Lost Sort Artist info

I have a 65gB library on an external drive that I use on my MacBook Pro. I have put considerable effort into organizing this library, specifically the Sort Artist info so that artists appear alphabetized by last name.
I just decided to create a new library on my Acer laptop. I set the iTunes media folder for this library to the same location as the iTunes media folder on the external drive of the previously mentioned library. Then, I added this folder to the new library on the Acer, so I could have the same libraries without having two copies of each file (I realize that if I add something to the library of one computer it won't appear in the library of the other, unless I add it manually).
The only problem I have with this is that the Sort Artist info is lost for some tracks in the newly created library, but not for all. The tracks that lost the info are tracks that were originally mp3 files that I converted to AAC. Fortunately, only a small portion of the library has this problem because I always rip CDs in AAC format, and the mp3s are files I got from friends and then converted to AAC.
Anyone know why it is only these files that lost the info and none of the others?
Message was edited by: Grandmaster Jesh
Message was edited by: Grandmaster Jesh

If anyone runs into a similar problem, I thought that I would add that I figured out that the cause of the problem is editing the track info and then converting from mp3 to AAC.
Solution: First convert mp3s to AAC, and then edit the Sort Artist info.

Similar Messages

  • What is the use of Sort / Artist?

    Hi All,
    Can anybody explain what the use of the Sort/Artist information in iTunes? What I'm really trying to do is sort by artist more cleanly on my iPod once I download; so many albums have a main artist and then x number of guests so each of these end up being an entry which makes it a mess to find everything by an artist. Can the Sort/Artist info help me on the iPod or is it only on in iTunes?
    Thanks!
    Pentium II   Windows XP  
    Pentium II   Windows XP  

    Hi User,
    The best place to search for questions like this one is OTN, Oracle Technology Network. If you have any question about CLOUD and partnering with Oracle we will be more than glad to help! Thanks.

  • ITunes has 'lost' Artist info for purposes of viewing/sorting

    PLEASE HELP!! Not sure if it has anything to do with iTunes 8 or the new Genius function, however my iTunes library has 'lost' several artists but only when viewing or searching under the 'Artist' listing....the music is all still there but can only can be found when searching under 'Albums' or 'Genre'............Extremely frustrating!!
    In addition, while my 60GB iPod Classic (2005) still shows all the information under 'Artist', my brand new 120GB Classic (which has the Genius function pre-installed) is having the exact same issue as my iTunes...has anyone else come across the issue or have any suggestions?
    Many thanks!

    ...well that was a bloody useful effort.

  • "Sort Artist" does not work on iPod / How to sort by album artist

    I have many albums in my music collection that contain songs by different artists. In iTunes, I have set all these songs to the same "Sort Artist" so that they all appear under the same artist's name (the album artist's name).
    However, when I sync my iPod, the "Sort Artist" settings don't carry over. For example, a compilation album with 10 songs by 10 different artists would show up under one single artist in iTunes (per my sort artist settings), but on the iPod the songs show up under 10 different artists. Is there any way to fix this problem? I basically want to sort my music by album artist, instead of just the artist.
    The strange part is when I browse my iPod on my computer, the compilation albums are properly sorted under one artist, but it's still wrong when I browse on the iPod itself.

    It could be that you have inadvertently imported these CDs into iTunes as part of a compilation. If so, the artists won't show in the artists menu on the iPod.
    To check, highlight the tracks on one of the offending artists CDs in iTunes, right click and select "get info". This brings up a multiple song info window, and from there you can check if you have 'yes' in the box marked "part of a compilation".
    If you have, select 'no' instead and click 'ok'. Do this with any CD that has this issue. This will alter the info in iTunes, and you should then connect your iPod and synchronize the changes.
    The problem arises because the information contained on the Gracenote CD Data Base (where iTunes gets all it's album/artist/track info from), is sometimes incorrect. It can show CDs as compilations when in fact they are not.
    You should also check that the songs have album name info in their ID tags.
    See: Some songs don't show under artist on my iPod.
    Once you add a second album name for that artist even for a single song, ALL the rest of the songs should now show up under that artist, even those without album names.
    Providing the spelling for the artists is exactly the same of course.

  • Need help restoring artist info in iTunes

    iTunes 11.1.11
    So last night I downloaded a compilation album from iTunes. 200 songs for only $3. And all the songs are pretty decent, too!
    When I downloaded them, they had been sorted under Various Artists instead of by their individual artist name, so searching for an artist from the compilation would only bring up the compilation (and every other "Various Artists" compilation I have). So, mistakenly and stupidly, I accidentally deleted all of the individual artist information for all 200 tracks. It still has the track name, order, album, etc. Just not the artist info.
    I tried to restore them from TimeCapsule, but they still lacked the artist info.
    I really don't want to manually enter all the artists by hand, is there a way I can recover the original artist tag info?

    See these for the iPod service error.
    iPod service error.
    Fast user switching in Windows XP is not supported.

  • I have a major problem regarding Itunes mismatching sort-artists to the actual artist and reverting edits i make

    this has been ongoing for about one and a half years, it started when one day i signed in and discovered that nearly everly. single. song was mismatched all over the place, it took me a while to understand why because i'm not tech savvy, but discovered that the sorting on each song had changed (for example, a piece by Beethoven would have the artist as Beethoven, but the Sort Artist under David Bowie etc...) I spent a year redoing everything, going through every single artist manually and changing it, hoping that would be the end of it. But now it's happening again, I do a thing where I change the Sort Artist and the Viewed Artist of an album to a certain classical composer so that it's all under his name in one place, however every week or so when i sign into itunes, it's all reverted back to the original artist name (IN NAME ONLY) by that i mean when i click on the piece of music, it immediately resets and jumps back down to where it should be (Händel for example) this is extremely frustrating as each time i sync my ipod it gets the mismatched artist info again, how in ** name do i stop this?
    for clarification: with the pieces on which i click to revert back to normal, when i check their info, they have not only the correct artist, but also the correct sorting artist in place which i have put there, so it makes no sense why they would revert

    tsdagg wrote:
    for clarification: with the pieces on which i click to revert back to normal, when i check their info, they have not only the correct artist, but also the correct sorting artist in place which i have put there, so it makes no sense why they would revert
    Are making the changes in iTunes or using an external app? Do you use "update iTunes Match"?
    Jim

  • How do I sort artists by last name in iTunes?

    HHow do I sort artist by last name in iTunes without tagging each album?

    For individual songs, Get Info has a sort field.  If you have a lot of songs, it will still be a lot of work to get caught up, though.
    Good luck
    srb

  • Apple TV Does Not Sort Artists The Same As iTunes

    I'm having an issue I hope somebody can tell me how to get around. Many CDs I import (and some songs purchased on iTunes) will have a songs on them with a "featured" aritst. So, for instance ... instead of the artist for the particular song being "R.E.M." like the other songs on that album, it is "R.E.M. Feat. Kate Pearson". Then, in iTunes within the 'Artist Box' at above the song list in iTunes, there are two different artists: "R.E.M." and "R.E.M. Feat. Kate Pearson". To fix this in iTunes, I click into the 'Get Info' on the song and change the Album Artist and Sort Artist to "R.E.M." Then, everything is grouped together correctly.
    Now, the issue: This fix does not appear to transfer over to AppleTV. It still separates the artists as two separate artists.
    Any ideas or thoughts on how to get this to work correctly on AppleTV like it does on iTunes?

    Ok, I just figured it out on my end. Steps to follow:
    On your Mac or PC:
    Get into iTunes:
    Where your ATV is right click it and Disconnect (stop streaming)
    Your ATV will disappear then go to your Apple TV.
    On your Apple TV do the following:
    Go to Settings:
    Click Computers:
    Then where your shared Computer is click on it and Disconnect.
    Once this is done, you will still see your computers name or "Connect to" click on that and it will show a 5 digit number. Go to your Computer and type it in when the Apple TV pops up in iTunes. This will totally reset your ATV and you can rename it if you would like. Also choose "Custom" for syncing and then once you hit Apply any purchases you made on your ATV will transfer to your computer right then and their.
    Hope this helps.

  • Sort Artist

    I use the iTunes "Sort Artist" field to have my artists listed by last name first. For example when I import a Ryan Adams CD I list the artist as Ryan Adams and the Sort Artist as Adams, Ryan. This results in Ryan Adams being listed in the A's in iTunes. On my Apple TV and Front Row I have an entry for BOTH Ryan Adams and Adams, Ryan while browsing by artist. I have checked and every track by this artist has the sort artist field completed. This happens with every similar entry. Am I missing something, or is this just a software bug?

    do you have anything in the "album artist" field?
    if not, try putting in the same info as you have in the "artist" field.. see if that makes any difference.

  • Sort artists with numbers as their names first

    Not to long ago, iTunes used to sort artists that had numbers in their names (311, 2pac, 50 cent)
    first on the list, which i loved because numbers should always come before letters, but in the recent updates with itunes, numbers are now last after the Z's
    Can someone give me a solution for this? a registry key or something maybe?

    I did a litle cheat. I have some artists that I WANT to list at the top and before I did the
    1. [artist name]
    2. [artist2 name]
    But since they decided to list these at the bottom (stupid decision), I mass updated the info on each artist to start with a.1, a.2, a.3, etc. This now lists the artists at the top in the order I want them in. A very nice easy workaround. No telling what Apple will do down the road, it's obvious they think #'s should be after letters. Contrarian company, I swear.
    Message was edited by: Jerry Ferguson1

  • ITunes not properly sorting artists?

    I sort my iTunes main music folder by Artists (A-Z) and for some reason, one of my artists' songs that start with an 'L' (Lana Del Rey) is in the middle of all the 'D' artists. The remainder of her songs are properly in the 'L' section, but I CANNOT figure out why this one song is in the 'D' section. I know it seems trivial, but it is actually driving me insane. I tried removing the song and re-adding it, but that did not work. I made sure all the information was consistent in the 'Get Info' area, but to no avail. Does anybody have any idea why this is happening, and/or a possible solution?
    Thanks.

    There isn't an album artist set, or a sort artist?  If something was entered as Del Rey, Lana this would end up sorted by D.

  • Applescript to reverse names for Sort Artist

    Does anyone know of an Applescript to use in iTunes to take the Artist, reverse the names and put the result into the Sort Artist field? In other words, if the Artist is "Elvis Presley", it would automatically assign "Presley, Elvis" to the Sort Artist field.
    I have checked on Doug's Applescripts site, but couldn't find this function.
    Thanks!

    I've also been looking for the answer to this question. Have you figured out if there's a way to do it?
    I don't want to have to edit each and every song entry - I want iTunes to automatically sort "Joel, Bill" instead of "Billy Joel."
    Anyone have any info?

  • How to fix sorting artist problems?

    Hey, I need some help here.
    So I got a MacBook Air and synced it with my iPhone 5s, I lost all my iPhone music and started adding them over again but I noticed something which is frustrating to me. For example:
    Artist: A Day To Remember
    When I transfer it to my iPhone, I open the app and it is sorted only as "Day To Remember" even when in the iPhone Music Library in my Mac it's listed as "A Day To Remember", after B's.
    Same happens with some artists that start with THE.
    I don't understand what's going on and fixing the tags in the iPhone music library is useless. And now the Mac library is not solving the problem either (Already tried checking and fixing the album artist and "sort as" types and still no response.)
    Does anyone know the source to this issue?
    Thanks
    JM

    There are actually several workarounds for this:
    You can manually override the automatically-generated sort values - so if you want albums by The Beatles to sort by "T" rather than "B" you can enter "The Beatles" in the Sort Artist field
    turingtest2 has created a VBScript that will do this automatically for a range of selected items - see the UnAutoSort script on this page.
    If you're feeling really adventurous, you can modify iTunes' behavior for sort names by editing the appropriate version of the SortPrefixes.plist file - depending on your versions of Windows/iTunes this will be in C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.Resources\en.lproj or C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes\iTunes.Resources\en.lproj (for US English), or the relevant folder in iTunes Resources for other languages.  Note that any changes here will need to be repeated after every iTunes update as the file is reset to its default values by the installation process.
    (Edit: obviously the references above are for Windows, I'm not sure whether there's a Mac equivalent of turingtest2's script but editing the SortPrefixes.plist file will work on Mac as well, allowing for variations in iTunes' folder structures).

  • De-cluttering tip: Is there a way to prevent a track from showing up under "Artist" while still being able to view the artist info when I play the song by Album?

    I asked this question here:
    https://discussions.apple.com/message/15312099#15312099
    It was suggested I re-post in this forum, seeing as the problem may be specific to the Touch.
    So, I have lots of "compilation" albums that include songs by various artists (for example, Pitchfork's top 500 singles of the decade). I usually select my music by "Artist," and now my ipod is super cluttered, because now I have hundreds and hundreds of artists listed, many of which I only have one or two songs by from this compilation.
    One solution: simply delete the artist information for these large compilations, and then the songs from the compilations will no longer show up under "Artists." Problem is, I would like to know who the artists are when I play the compilation (I simply don't want to have the artists listed under "Artists")
    Another solution: I could manually delete the artist info, but paste that info on to the song name. For example, a track that once looked like:
    Artist: Nirvana
    Title: Smells Like Teen Spirit
    Album: Best of the '90s
    After my editing, would look like:
    Artist: [blank]
    Title: Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
    Album: Best of the '90s
    This would solve my problem...but it would literally take hours to do for each and every individual song. Not practical.
    Does any one have any other suggestions? It seems like there would be a way to just check a box for what info you want to be listed (ie, I could un-check "Artist," and then the song would no longer be listed by Artist, even though the Artist information would still be retained for reference). Does this option exist?
    In the prior thread, someone suggested I mark it as a "compilation" in iTunes. But that did not prevent the individual artists from being listed under "Artists." Someone suggested that I may need to turn "Compilation" to "On" on my iPod. But that does not seem to be an option on the Touch.
    Suggestions?
    Thanks!!

    So, I have lots of "compilation" albums that include songs by various artists (for example, Pitchfork's top 500 singles of the decade). I usually select my music by "Artist," and now my ipod is super cluttered, because now I have hundreds and hundreds of artists listed, many of which I only have one or two songs by from this compilation.
    Why not set the iPod to show Compilations?
    In Settings select Main menu (or Music menu) and check Compilations. (You can do so for both if you desire.)
    Now all of the Artists that only appear in compilation albums won't appear in Artists.
    To get to the Artists that only appear in compilation albums open Compilations in your Main Menu or Music Menu (or either).

  • Itunes erased all the album and artist info when reloading library!!!

    My problem is a big one. I've got 8600+ songs (800+ albums) on my hard drive. These are all from physical CDs; I ripped them in wav, then converted them to mp3. When I did this, I kept both the wav AND mp3 files in each respective album folder; about 400G of wav and 80G of mp3.
    OK, so a couple weeks ago I got hit with a virus. It messed up my XP OS to the point where I needed to do a reformat and reinstall. All of my music files are on an external hard drive, so no big deal there. I finish the reinstall, re-download itunes, and tell it where to find my music, and to import it into the library.
    This is where things go horribly wrong. Itunes imports all the mp3 files in as separate folders/albums, just like before, with all the track and artist info intact. However, for some reason, it took all the wav files and dumped them into one giant Unknown Artist/Unknown Album folder. In doing so, it appears to have stripped the artist AND album info from every single one of the 8600+ tracks! I don't know why it did this, as the wav files in the itunes folder all had the exact same track info as the mp3s.
    My question now is: is there any way I can get this info BACK, any program that can look at the individual tracks and figure out what artist and album they go with? Or is there something within itunes that can do it that I haven't found yet? There's no way I can go through and do this track by track; I can't even begin to calculate how long that'd take. My only OTHER option would be to re-rip all the CDs, but again, that took months the first time and I don't want to do it again. However, these files are pretty much useless as they are, in a giant pile that seems only to be organized by the songs' respective track numbers.
    I am screaming HELP in capital letters here. Even if I could find a program or solution that would find MOST of the tracks' info, I'd be happy. I'd also be interested in knowing why itunes did this in the first place, for future reference.
    And just to head off one solution I expect to be offered, no, I did not have the files backed up anywhere else; reimporting an un-reorganized version of the library isn't an option. I had just finished ripping them and hadn't picked up a second hard drive yet. I know, first thing I should have done.
    In any event, any help would be appreciated. Please feel free to email me. Thanks.

    I just remembered some older posts talking about some software from musicbrainz.org.
    It might be able to make some sense out of all those WAV files, if you decide to spend the time on it. Honestly I'd prefer to rip my CDs than go through something like that, because I'm a control freak and would not trust the program to really find the right info....but that's just me. It might be easy to set up and a snap to use, for all I know.
    http://forums.musicbrainz.org/viewtopic.php?id=1730

Maybe you are looking for